Breakthroughs

by Harry Turtledove

  But fish and crabs and whatever lived at the bottom of the sea in the middle of the Atlantic were giving George the only burial he would ever get. Fishermen shuddered when they talked of things like that. Along with all his friends, George had hated the idea of going down at sea. Sylvia knew men who wouldn’t eat crab or lobster because of what the shellfish might have been eating.

  She stirred the dress she’d thrown in the kettle full of black dye. It would be ready pretty soon. She’d used a good deal of coal heating water to dye clothes for mourning; that was cheaper than buying new black dresses and shirtwaists. She hoped the Coal Board wouldn’t cut the ration yet again, though.

  Mary Jane came into the kitchen and said, “I want to go out and play.”

  “Go on, then,” Sylvia said with a sigh. Mary Jane wasn’t really mourning; how could she mourn a man she scarcely remembered? She knew Sylvia was upset, but had trouble understanding why. George, Jr., had known his father well enough to miss him, but he was also far less wounded than he would have been had George come home every night. School seemed far more real and far more urgent to him than a father long at sea.

  Sylvia wished she felt the same way. Now that George was gone, she found herself far more forgiving of his flaws than she had been while he was alive. She even—almost—wished he’d gone to bed with that colored strumpet, to give him one more happy memory to hold on to when the torpedo slammed into the Ericsson.

  “Not fair,” she muttered, stirring again. The Confederacy had already dropped out of the war, and England had been on the point of giving up. Why, how, had a British submersible chosen her husband’s ship in those waning moments of the war? Where was the sense in that?

  George hadn’t even mentioned British submersibles to her. All he’d ever written about were Confederate boats. Why had the Royal Navy decided to move one of theirs into that part of the ocean?

  She didn’t suppose questions like that had any answers. A minister would have called it God’s will. As far as she was concerned, that wasn’t any answer, either. Why had God decided to take everybody on board the Ericsson? Because her husband had wanted to screw a whore? If God started taking every man who’d ever wanted to do that, men would get thin on the ground mighty quick.

  Men had got thin on the ground. So many women wore mourning these days, or had worn it and were now returning to less somber wear. Sylvia looked at the alarm clock, which she’d brought out of the bedroom. The dress had been in the kettle long enough. Sylvia carried the kettle over to the sink and poured out the water in which she’d dyed the dress. Then she wrung the dress as dry as she could and set it on a hanger to finish drying. That done, she scrubbed at her hands with floor soap to clean the dye from her knuckles and around and under her nails.

  She was just drying her hands—and noting that she hadn’t got rid of all the dye—when someone knocked on the door. Her mouth twisted bitterly as she went to open it. She’d already had the worst news she could get. Opening the door held no terror for her now.

  Brigid Coneval stood in the hallway. The Irishwoman still wore black for her own dead husband. “And how is it today, Sylvia?” she asked. Where nothing else had, their common loss left them on a first-name basis. They understood each other in a way no one who had not shared that loss ever could.

  “It’s…about the same as always,” Sylvia said. She stepped aside. “Come in, why don’t you?”

  “Don’t mind if I do,” Brigid said. She nodded when she saw the big kettle sticking up out of the kitchen sink, which was not very deep, and smelled the acrid odor of the dye still hanging in the air. “Och, I did enough of that and to spare, so I did.”

  “As long as I’m doing things, I don’t have to worry about what happened,” Sylvia said. “And so I keep finding things to do.” She waved a hand. “This place has never been so clean.”

  “My flat’ll never be clean, I’m thinking, but then I’m after having three boys,” Brigid Coneval said. “But I do know what you’re saying, indeed and I do. In bed of nights, I keep thinking What if he’d stopped to piss? or What if he’d fallen down before that damned bullet came by? or—or I don’t know what, but anything to make it different than it was.”

  “Anything to make it different,” Sylvia echoed. “Oh, Christ, yes. What was that stinking English submarine doing where there hadn’t been any English submarines? It had no business being in that part of the ocean. The Confederates had already given up, and—”

  “It does no good—dwelling on it, I mean,” Brigid broke in.

  “I know that. Sometimes I can’t help it, though,” Sylvia said. “Sometimes even when I’m working…I was thinking about that damned submarine”—she brought out the word not casually, as her friend had done, but with savage relish—“even while I was dyeing my dress.”

  “It does no good,” Brigid Coneval repeated. “Well, the truth is, there’s not a thing that does any good, but there is a thing, sure and there is, that keeps you from thinking so much about it.” She opened her handbag and pulled out a flat pint bottle of whiskey.

  Sylvia got up, went over to the cabinet by the kitchen sink, and brought back a couple of glasses. She watched as the coppery liquid gurgled into them. She didn’t drink that much or that often, not least because whiskey tasted like medicine to her. But Brigid was right—whiskey was medicine here, because it kept her from thinking clearly when clear thought was the last thing she wanted.

  “Ahh!” Brigid smacked her lips and poured another shot into her glass. She thrust the pint toward Sylvia, who shook her head. Brigid Coneval shrugged and drank. She wasn’t shy about whiskey: on the contrary.

  George, Jr., came in. “Hello, Mrs. Coneval,” he said.

  “And hello to you,” she answered with an extravagant gesture that almost sloshed the refill out of her glass. “What a fine, polite boy y’are.”

  The fine, polite boy had a new bruise on his cheek, very possibly gained by roughhousing with one of Brigid Coneval’s sons. He wrinkled his nose and said, “That dye stinks, Ma.”

  “I know it does,” Sylvia answered. “It can’t be helped, though.” She looked toward the clock. “Go find your sister and tell her to come in. It’s later than I thought. I’ll feed the two of you and get you ready for bed. I have to go back to work tomorrow, and you’re going back to school.”

  “All right,” he said, and hurried away. He liked the idea of going back to school. Sylvia wondered where he came by that. School had always bored her to tears, and George had never been any sort of scholar, either.

  “A good boy. A fine boy.” The whiskey made Brigid Coneval even more emphatic than she would have been without it. She got to her feet. “You tend to your wee ones, now. I’ll have to be laying hold of mine before long, too.” Sylvia also rose. The two women hugged each other. Brigid left, heading back to her apartment with great determination.

  Mary Jane was mutinous when she came back with her big brother. “Did you really tell him I had to go in?” she demanded of Sylvia, and looked surprised and disappointed when her mother nodded. Not even fried scrod for supper did much to cheer her up; she seemed convinced Sylvia had betrayed her.

  Nor was she enthusiastic about going to Mrs. Dooley’s the next morning. Once Sylvia warmed her bottom for her, she moved well enough. George, Jr., got off the trolley and bounded toward his school. He’d grown tired of being cooped up at home.

  At the shoe factory, everyone greeted Sylvia with a warm show of sympathy. Gustav Krafft, the foreman, was a man of few words. Even he was kind. “From your fellow workers,” he said as he handed her an envelope. It not only crinkled, but also clinked.

  “Thank you so much,” Sylvia said. “Thank you all so much.” Money could do only so much, but she was glad to have it. No one could do much without it. Eventually, she would get a payment from the government, but God only knew how long that would take. If the Coal Board was any indication, it might take forever.

  “You poor dear,” Emma Kilgore said. “Jack’s c
oming home, thank the sweet Lord, but I know how you got to feel, Sylvia, sweetheart. If it was me, I’d be out of my mind.”

  “I feel like I am, sometimes,” Sylvia answered. The redheaded woman at the sewing machine next to her did not know how she felt, regardless of whether she thought she did. She was counting the days till her husband came back to Boston from Tennessee. What did Sylvia have to count? Nothing at all.

  The work was steady, and demanded enough concentration that Sylvia couldn’t let her mind drift, as she often had back at the mackerel-canning plant. Thinking about anything except the pieces of leather in front of her was asking for a punctured hand. She couldn’t dwell on losing George, not unless she also wanted to dwell on what the doctor would have to do to repair her.

  Toward the middle of the afternoon, the woman who had hired her came into the factory hall and said, “May I see you for a moment, Mrs. Enos?”

  “Of course. Let me finish this first, please.” Sylvia joined the pieces of leather together and tossed them into the box by the machine. Then she caught Gustav Krafft’s eye. Only after he nodded permission did she rise and accompany the hiring clerk. As she did, she said, “I hope nothing’s wrong.”

  “You’ve done a very good job with us, as a matter of fact,” the woman said as they left the factory floor. If she noticed Sylvia was wearing mourning, she didn’t mention it. She waved her to a chair: the very chair in which she’d been sitting, in fact, when she was hired.

  “Miss, could you please tell me what’s going on?” Sylvia asked.

  “Yes, I will tell you,” the hiring clerk answered. “Like I said, all the reports on your work have been very good, and Krafft isn’t easy to please. But our orders have been cut because of peace, and we have men coming back, and you are one of our most recent employees. And so—”

  “You’re letting me go,” Sylvia said dully.

  “I am sorry,” the woman said. “I do feel bad about it, because you’ve worked out very well here.” That did Sylvia exactly no good. The woman who’d hired her went on, “I wish we could keep you, but business doesn’t allow it. And our brave men in uniform will be returning, looking for the jobs they—”

  “My brave man in uniform won’t be returning,” Sylvia broke in, “and my children and I will be going hungry because of this.”

  “I am sorry,” the woman repeated. “I’ll be happy to give you the very best of good characters, which will surely help you get a position at a firm that is hiring.”

  “But firms aren’t hiring,” Sylvia said. “Firms are letting people go. Firms are letting women like me go so they can hire men, like you said.” She sighed. “I’ll take that good character. It won’t do me any good, but I’ll take it.” What am I going to do now? she asked herself. What can I do now? The question was far easier to ask than to answer.

  Cincinnatus was walking to the trolley stop when someone whistled behind him. He looked back over his shoulder and saw Lucullus, Apicius’ son, waving at him. He didn’t grimace—not on the outside where Lucullus could see. Instead, he waved. Lucullus came toward him at a heavy trot: he was on his way to putting on his father’s massive bulk.

  “What you want?” Cincinnatus asked him. “Whatever it is, you better make it snappy, on account of I’m gonna be late for work if I miss this here trolley car.”

  “Well, ain’t you high and mighty?” Lucullus said. He was getting his own man’s confidence; he wouldn’t have been so sharp with Cincinnatus a year before. “My pa says, he got to figure out whether to fish or cut bait with you pretty damn quick, an’you won’t like it if he decide he got to cut bait.”

  “You tell your pa that if anything happens to me, I got myself a little book,” Cincinnatus answered. “First thing that happens after somethin’ happens to me is, that little book goes straight to Luther Bliss.” He’d been bluffing when he said that to Joe Conroy. He wasn’t bluffing any more. Anyone who tried to bring him down would go down with him.

  Lucullus screwed up his face. He could see that. He was no fool; Cincinnatus would never have thought Apicius’—Apicius Wood’s—son could be a fool. He said, “My pa says you ain’t got the right attitude, Cincinnatus. You is for yourself ’fore you is for the people.”

  “I take care of myself and I mind my business,” Cincinnatus said. “That’s all I want to do. That’s all I ever wanted to do. Anybody tries to keep me from doin’ that, he can get lost, far as I’m concerned. I don’t care who he is.”

  “You do got the wrong attitude,” Lucullus said reproachfully. “If the proletariat ain’t united against the oppressors, it ain’t anything.”

  “And what about if the party of the proletariat tries oppressin’ me?” Cincinnatus returned. Instead of answering, Lucullus made another sour face and strode off. Cincinnatus watched him go, then hurried on to the trolley stop. The Reds wouldn’t leave him alone for no better reason than that he asked them to. He knew that only too well.

  He threw his nickel in the trolley fare box and went to the back of the car with something approaching relief. While he rode the trolley, as when he was driving a truck, nobody bothered him. He sometimes thought those were the only times when no one bothered him. Oh, every once in a while at home, but that wasn’t the same.

  New graffiti marked several buildings along the trolley route. Some were blue X’s, others three horizontal lines of paint, red-white-red. Only after Cincinnatus had seen several of them did he realize what they were supposed to suggest: the Confederate battle flag and the Stars and Bars. The diehards were busy again, then. Others in Covington were bound to be quicker on the uptake than he was. No sooner had that thought crossed his mind than he saw a work crew splashing whitewash over one of those blue X’s. No, the Yankees didn’t miss a trick.

  Somehow, Cincinnatus was not surprised to find Luther Bliss waiting at the trolley stop where he got off. The chief of the Kentucky State Police didn’t get on the trolley, either. He fell into step beside Cincinnatus as the Negro headed toward the shed where Lieutenant Straubing’s crew gathered at the start of each new run.

  “Mornin’, Mr. Driver,” he said, irony in his voice at addressing a Negro by his surname. “Hope I won’t take up too much of your precious time today.”

  “Mornin’ to you, Mr. Bliss,” Cincinnatus answered. “I hope you won’t, too, suh. I don’t know nothin’ more’n I did last time we talked, and the Army gets powerful riled if I’m late to work—it don’t matter how come.”

  Bliss gave him a nasty glare. He’d mentioned the Army on purpose; it was the one institution that had more power in Covington than Bliss’ secret police. After a couple of silent strides, the chief said, “I’ll make you a deal—you tell me who punched that bastard Kennedy’s ticket for him and you’ll never see my face again. That’s a promise.”

  Cincinnatus laughed in the aforementioned face. “You don’t know who done it, an’ the Reds don’t know who done it, an’ the Confederate diehards don’t know who done it, an’you all reckon I know who done it. Only thing I know about Tom Kennedy is that I used to work for the man.”

  He knew a great deal more than that. He also knew Luther Bliss did not know how much he knew. Had the secret policeman known that, Cincinnatus would not have been heading in to work. He would have been in jail, or more likely dead.

  Bliss did know he wasn’t telling everything. “You only knew Kennedy because you worked for him, what was he doing on your doorstep better than two years later?”

  “Damned if I know,” Cincinnatus answered. “He got shot before he could tell me anything. Maybe he was running from the Kentucky State Police.”

  “Not right then, I don’t reckon,” Bliss said. “If he was running from us, he’d have been stupid to run to you, because he must’ve known we were keeping an eye on you, too. And whatever else you could say about the goddamn son of a bitch, Tom Kennedy wasn’t stupid.”

  Bliss was undoubtedly right—nobody harassing Cincinnatus was stupid. Cincinnatus didn’t say anything about t
hat. The less he said, the better the chance the Kentucky State Police chief would give up—give up for the time being, anyhow—and go away. But Bliss, with his odd eyes the color of a hunting dog’s, stuck with him like a hunting dog on a scent. Side by side, they approached the shed where Lieutenant Straubing’s drivers gathered.

  Straubing was waiting outside. “Good morning, Cincinnatus,” he said. “You’ll have to tell your friend good-bye here.”

  “Good-bye, friend,” Cincinnatus said at once, smiling in Luther Bliss’ direction.

  Now Bliss laughed at him. “You don’t get rid of me that easy. I have some more questions that need answering.”

  “Ask them some other time,” Lieutenant Straubing said. “Nothing interferes with my men when they’re supposed to be working. Nothing. Have you got that?”

  “Listen, Junior, I’m Luther Bliss, and I’m looking into a killing,” Bliss said. Maybe the Army didn’t faze him after all. Maybe nothing fazed him. That wouldn’t have surprised Cincinnatus one bit. “Far as I’m concerned, that’s a hell of a lot more important than if one nigger hops in a truck on time. Have you got that?”

  Straubing wasn’t any older than Cincinnatus. He was skinny and on the pale side. And, as far as Cincinnatus could tell, he never backed down from anybody or anything. “Sounds like you’re trying to sell me the Brooklyn Bridge,” he answered. “Cincinnatus didn’t kill anybody. If he had killed somebody, you wouldn’t be grilling him here. He’d be in prison. If it’s about somebody else doing some killing, I think it can keep—doesn’t sound like fresh news, anyhow. Now just who’s supposed to be dead, and why do you think Cincinnatus knows the first thing about it?” That was Lieutenant Straubing to the core: methodical, precise, unyielding.

  “Why do I reckon he knows something about it?” Bliss asked with a chuckle. “Because the fellow who’s dead got his head blown off right on your little darling’s front stoop, that’s why. Bastard was a Rebel diehard name of Tom Kennedy.”